Of all the branches of human knowledge there is no one which sooner exercised the understandings of men than that of medicine, first as a practical art, and then as a science, as there is none to which he is impelled by stronger motives; and accordingly we find it practised by a separate clan, in some of the rudest nations. Yet long and diligently as it has been cultivated, it has made prodigious advances of late years, and human reason has here too achieved its accustomed triumphs. In the surgical branch diseases are cured every day, often too by young and inexperienced operators, that were once deemed immedicable, and often proved fatal. The materia medica has been improved both by happy accidents, and the scientific labors of the chemist--and the science, trusting only to cautious observation and experiment, has profited as much by what it has rejected from the catalogue of sanative remedies, as what it has added. Reason has here taken the place of superstition and blind credulity, and few prescriptions are now made on purely empirical grounds. We have the most conclusive evidence of the advance of the medical science, in the greater average length of life now, compared with former periods. It has in England increased in 31 years from 1 in 33 to 1 in 58. A similar increase has been found to have taken place in every nation of Europe. In Great Britain, France and Germany, the average increase has been from 1 in 30 to 1 in 38 in less than two generations. And if a part of this melioration may be attributed to the moral improvement of men, to the greater wealth and comfort of a greater number, the diminution of intemperance and other vices, a part also seems fairly attributable to the medical science; but in either way it attests the progress of reason and philosophy. The progress of those sciences which exercise no other faculty but the reason, also attest the increase and vigor of the human faculties. Algebra is not only more generally cultivated than in a former age, but it is now applied to every species of regular form and motion that matter can assume, and has thus reached conclusions which seemed unattainable by human skill; and the calculus which one generation readily performs, was scarcely intelligible to that which preceded it. Even our most familiar and household concerns show the increased influence of reason over our actions. The dress of both sexes is more conformable to nature than formerly, and less biassed by caprice and arbitrary or accidental forms. I need only, by way of proof, refer to hair powder and buckles, and the tight ligatures which once bound our limbs or bodies, but bind them no longer. Forms have been discarded or abridged and made subservient to convenience--our modes of eating, drinking and sleeping--all the ordinary habits of social life prove the growing ascendancy of reason over habit and prejudice. Though in all of these we may occasionally see some retrograde steps.